Perfect is the Enemy of Good

On June 5, 2009, Readerville closed up shop, and by June 6 I had started giving serious thought to what would come next. Readerville was good to me in a number of ways, but being part of the blogging team there really struck a chord. I loved the whole colloquy I'd gotten going with the small community
of bloggers, the larger world of readers, and the great big universe of
the literary. It was stimulating on a regular basis, and it was fun. And
I liked the synergy we had as a group there. Karen Templer put together
a good team of articulate, opinionated, and interested writers, and I
always felt a general degree of respect for what we did.

So I'm — well, poaching is a harsh term — I'm gathering my
fellow Readerville alumni around me in the hope that we can carry some
of that good momentum forward. I realize there's a very good chance the
world doesn't need another litblog. The conversation has been popping
up a lot this month, maybe in predictably cyclical fashion but certainly
timely for me: Is the litblog dead? Is the litblog as we know it dead, poised to mutate and spawn and devour the empty husks of newsprint? Is this just highbrow jerking off? And if so, is that OK?

Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence and D.G. Myers at A Commonplace Blog
put up a round-table symposium on the subject at the beginning of
September and got some thoughtful, smart responses — I read them all and
came away neither overloaded nor depressed, which is no small thing.
Mark Athitakis offered up a particularly measured response in American Fiction Notes, which sparked some good commentary at Literary Kicks and the Denver Post. (If I hadn't just finished drawing up that pretty banner, I might have considered naming this blog deaddeaddead.com. Someone should buy it up.)

Fortunately, there aren't a lot of stylistic distinctions we need to fuss over here. We have some chops already — a fine content-to-link ratio, the right amount of snark to sincerity. We already know how it feels to do it right. As Athitakis says: "Ultimately a blog’s success is going to have to be defined by how
often you provide interesting commentary about books, without gimmicks." Hey — that we can do.

The entire summer has come and gone since I first thought of this. It's most definitely still a work in progress. I could dither with it forever, but if we're in the business of quoting Voltaire, another good one to keep in mind is Perfect is the enemy of good. If I can't roll with a little indeterminacy, I'm in the wrong business. I hope people will feel free to comment and to contribute as well — if you have something you think is worth writing about here, send it to me at likefire.mail@gmail.com. Criticism is also welcome, as are compliments.

The painting is "The Bookworm," by Carl Spitzweg. Yeah, I know it's corny, but I don't believe it doesn't make you smile just a little.

Readerville had been down a week before I knew about it, out of town, computer problems, etc. I was so depressed because the first thing I did when I got my computer back was log on to RV. Though I’ve reconnected with a lot of RVers other places, I’m so happy about this. Congratulations, Lisa.

NBM, the link to the Literary Saloon is right there under… “the.” It is a very good site for looking outside the provincial U.S. box. Maybe a listing tweak is in order.
Thanks, everyone, for all your good words. Now to buckle down and provide a little content for y’alls.

“Making the perfect the enemy of the good” is actually the name of my mental illness.
I like the name of the blog too.
I have a weird association with it though, I first saw it a number of years ago when I was obsessively reading and hearing things wrong on purpose… you know “that’s a cool-ass car” becomes “that’s a cool ass-car”. (tm xkcd)
I reread the quote a few times (it was in a fairly pretentious presentation handout for a viral marketing proposal) and proceeded to destroy my productivity for the remainder of the day saying “I like fire!” and “do you like fire?” eventually I was answering my phone that way and annoying everyone working in earshot when unbeknownst to me the author of the presentation (a boss, but not my boss) walked up behind me while I was making my vibrating hulk hogan action figure fight my bobble-head jesus as they argued over who liked fire… jesus in a put on nasal whine and hulk hogan in that sort of schoolyard retarded taunt voice…
To make the whole thing especially unpleasant they were battling it out on the presentation handout and saying: “I like fire!” “No! I like Fire!” “No! Me! Me and Voltaire! We like Fire!”.
I was asked to write an apology.

A most excellent story, Angus! I needed a good laugh this afternoon. Too bad that boss didn’t subscribe to Voltaire’s notion: “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.”
Everyone should have a Voltaire bobblehead! This photo at Wikipedia would make a great model.